Orlando City met expansion Charlotte FC for the first time ever and came away with all three points, washing the terrible taste of the Red Bulls match out of our mouths — much like cleansing the palate from the awful taste of actual Red Bull. The Lions were far from perfect but a standout performance from Ruan — his best of the season so far — helped Orlando City get back in the win column. We break down the match and some of the curious officiating decisions that thankfully didn’t cost the Lions any points. We also made our picks for Man of the Match and those picks will not shock you.

Chris Mueller is returning to MLS but it won’t be as a Lion. The former Orlando first-round pick is off to his hometown club in Chicago from Hibernian FC, but at least the Lions will apparently be getting something for the player who transferred freely only months ago.

The Orlando Pride kicked off the 2022 NWSL regular season and it started like all the previous NWSL regular seasons — without a Pride victory. Orlando was poor in the opener despite having some good early moments, and ultimately melted down in a 12-minute span, conceding three goals in a lopsided loss to Gotham FC.

OCB, on the other hand, did not play. That wasn’t the way the schedule had things going, but Rochester’s stadium wasn’t playable, so the Young Lions got an unexpected weekend off to go along with the expected weekend off that lies ahead.

This week’s mailbag asked about concerts and MLS alignment. If there’s anything — and we do mean anything — you want us to address on the next show, just ask by tweeting it to us at @TheManeLand with the hashtag #AskTMLPC.

And we closed the show by giving our key match-ups and score predictions for Saturday’s trip to play CF Montreal (without Robin Jansson) and next week’s U.S. Open Cup match against the Philadelphia Union.

Stay safe and enjoy the show!

Here’s how No. 293 went down:

0:15 - Orlando City got back in the win column against the MLS newcomers and was Chris Mueller’s great 2020 season an outlier?

46:41 - The Pride were bad again and OCB didn’t have anyone to play.

59:27 - It’s mailbag time, plus our look ahead to what we expect from the Montreal and Philadelphia matches.

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